Happy Labor Day

I hope all of you here in the U.S. are enjoying the three-day weekend. Good day for a barbecue or picnic. Speaking of which, here are a couple of versions of my picnic tote from a week ago.
Michael Beilner really expanded on my design to hold lots more stuff:

I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out a way to add a handle to my caddy. Bill Bumpus had a great solution with a semi-circle wedge on the back.

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Got more mallets, you ask? Why sure. Heres 16-year-old Adam Howarths ash and lignum vitae mallet. Nope...I hadnt heard of that wood before, but it sounds very hard. Adam salvaged it from an old lawn bowling ball. 

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Check out this mirror stand made by Mike Speakman with very limited tools and showing some great detailing created using a Dremel tool.

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Finally, here is one awesome race car bed Josh Phillips made for his grandson. Wow, I would have loved a bed like that when I was a boy! Whats also cool is that Josh took pictures along the way and has shared them in this photo album. Well worth looking at. 

In his email, Josh described himself  as "an occasional woodworker, with fair skills, and no mania for perfection". 

I absolutely love that phrase, "No mania for perfection."  Beautiful. If I ever start to get manic about perfection, I suspect I may lose a little of the fun in woodworking.

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Mere Minutes. A little bit more on my shishi-odoshi fountain.

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